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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28556829">Day 12: Victory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex'>fascinationex</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>MEGASTAR-MAS 2020 [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Conquest, Dominion, Evil Marriage, M/M, decepticons being dorks, megastarmas 2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:42:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,146</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28556829</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There was chatter on the general comms channels.</p><p>Soundwave wasn’t doing a thing to suppress it, and Megatron did not step in. They had done good work this cycle, and perhaps deserved the loosening of strict discipline. Megatron, often derided as an intractable and cruel leader, nevertheless understood the purpose of rewarding good behaviour.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Megatron/Starscream (Transformers)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>MEGASTAR-MAS 2020 [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072040</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>66</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Day 12: Victory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>last one! last one!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was chatter on the general comms channels. 
</p><p>
Soundwave wasn’t doing a thing to suppress it, and Megatron did not step in. They had done good work this cycle, and perhaps deserved the loosening of strict discipline. Megatron, often derided as an intractable and cruel leader, nevertheless understood the purpose of rewarding good behaviour.
</p><p>
<em>What do you think is the difference between York and New York?</em> Breakdown wondered fretfully. <em>What was wrong with the first one? Why did they need two?</em>
</p><p>
Skywarp responded with a blistering string of emojis: <em>Who cares? They’re both on fire!</em> 
</p><p>
Megatron’s mouth curled in response, a rare show of humour at his ridiculous subordinates. The Autobots had not managed to follow their trail through the void of space, so the resistance had been minimal. The Decepticons had lost only two or three in their takeover, and had few injured.
</p><p>
Once it stopped being on fire, this world was ready for cyberforming. And it was ripe with energon under its crust. 
</p><p>
It felt like the break they needed in the long years of the war, an unexpected windfall for the Decepticons. 
</p><p>
It was probably not very good for the cowering remains of the previous owners of Sol-3, “Earth”, but they wouldn’t outlast the cyberforming. Unless someone was <em>particularly</em> determined to preserve some of them for amusement, the planet would shortly be relieved of much of its burden of organic life. Not even the local bacteria would survive what the Decepticons would do to the planet.
</p><p>
For now, he had set himself upon the rubble of a toppled building. The L-beams groaned beneath his tremendous weight. 
</p><p>
This was not the only toppled building in the vicinity. Spread out around Megatron was a shattered city: there was concrete ripped up in jagged chunks, reeking sewerage running across the bitumen freely, water spraying with a persistent hiss, bent street lights flickering fitfully. And distantly, fire. Much fire.
</p><p>
The air was thick with smoke and ash, but it had little impact on Megatron’s inorganic body. Cybertronian frames did not have fragile systems developed to participate in quaint organic gas exchanges, which could be destroyed simply by getting a bit of smoke in them.
</p><p>
Over the distant sounds of fire—and celebration, and occasionally screams—and the rush of broken pipes, Megatron heard a familiar jet engine. 
</p><p>
He looked up. His optics sought that well-known shape, scanning across the strange shapes cast by the smoke in the wind. Starscream was only a speck, but Megatron’s gaze locked on him and zoomed automatically. 
</p><p>
He zoomed out when he saw that he was coming in to land anyway. There wasn’t an easy spot for it—there was no broad flat clear space for him amid the wreckage. 
</p><p>
Starscream nonetheless twirled gracefully down through the billowing clouds of smoke, nose-first, and then pulled up all flashy and dramatic, sending smoke and flames and debris streaming and flickering away from his point of landing. The fires hissed and crackled and roared in response to the change in the air currents. 
</p><p>
His thrusters touched down very lightly, for all that. 
</p><p>
“<em>Megatron</em>,” he complained, sharp and nasal—always complaining, Starscream. “Of course I would find you here, <em>wallowing</em> in the smoke and debris and, ugh,” he lifted one thruster, grinding his intakes melodramatically at the smell of what he had stepped in, as though it had any power to make him purge, “<em>organic waste</em>.”
</p><p>
“Starscream,” said Megatron, watching his approach. Smoke drifted up from Starscream’s transformation seams, wreathing his wings briefly before dissipating in an upwards spiral. A street sign crunched underfoot as he came towards Megatron. “I’m afraid your subordinates already called in your victory in Kyoto. Skywarp was eager to get to the celebrating.”
</p><p>
Starscream made a singularly derisive noise in his engine. “<em>He</em> teleported into friendly fire—which was the most difficult part of the manoeuvre.” 
</p><p>
Megatron coughed in his vents. “That hadn’t made it into the report,” he admitted. 
</p><p>
Starscream sneered. “Of course not.” 
</p><p>
As though <em>he</em> had never failed to report on his own humiliations. Megatron chose not to bring that up for now. 
</p><p>
“Although <em>why</em> they’re all carousing like idiots when we should be regrouping and assessing the value of our conquest—at the <em>very least</em> we should be putting together surveying parties to determine the best mining locations. Our energon supplies won’t last forever—”
</p><p>
“Starscream, Starscream…” Megatron said patiently, “be silent.”
</p><p>
Starscream scowled at him. He never liked being told to do anything, but being told to stop talking was his least favourite. 
</p><p>
“We’ve won a great victory for the Decepticons today, Starscream. Let them celebrate. There will be time to plot and scheme later. Sit down.” A long pause, punctuated only by a greater intensity of scowling. “Relax.” 
</p><p>
“I suppose,” Starscream relented. 
</p><p>
He did not sit on his own, so Megatron reached out and drew him in, and he came without protest, taking two short steps to stand before Megatron, so close he could feel the heat from Starscream’s plating. It was only one more gentle tug before he gave in and perched upon Megatron’s thigh. His plating rang out against Megatron’s with the distinctive chime of light flight-frame armour.
</p><p>
The L-beam whined, and was ignored. 
</p><p>
Megatron closed his huge arms around Starscream’s frame. He thrummed comfortingly against him, solid and familiar.
</p><p>
Starscream leaned heavily into Megatron’s greater bulk, and his vents hissed softly with a sigh. Megatron could feel it as he did, indeed, relax: cables and joints clicking and creaking as they unwound and loosened. 
</p><p>
“Celebration, hm,” he said reflectively, aiming a sly glance up at Megatron’s face. 
</p><p>
Megatron said nothing, watching carefully. It wasn’t always obvious whether such an expression would precede an attempt to kiss him or an attempt to kill him. Both prospects were—exciting. 
</p><p>
But there had been plenty of fighting. All violent hungers and fuel-thirst had been slaked. Starscream drew his face down with one blue-painted hand, still polished to a sheen. 
</p><p>
His mouth was cold from the high winds of the flight, and the receptors in Megatron’s tasted only bitter ash. But his mouth was also slick, and despite his comments on carousing he had clearly refuelled, because his circuits carried some charge. It flickered across, lighting up the matching, little-used circuits in Megatron’s systems. He closed his eyes. 
</p><p>
When they parted, Starscream sighed luxuriously, a soft hiss that expanded through his vents, and licked his lips.
</p><p>
A fire nearby had grown in the intervening time, and now its light cast Starscream’s face in an orange glow, stark against the darkness of the smoke between them and the local star. He looked lovely. Megatron resisted the temptation to say so: Starscream’s ego didn’t need any encouragement. 
</p><p>
“I suppose surveying can wait a little while, then,” he murmured, inching even closer.
</p><p>
Megatron rumbled wordlessly in response, and together they turned to watch the remains of the city burn. 
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>That is a wrap for megastarmas 2020, I thought we'd end on a solid note of conquest &amp; victory. Thanks for reading, and thank you for all your very kind comments!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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